azdesertrose | I feel like shit.

I don't know what's wrong with me. I have no energy, no appetite, and I feel like absolute shit.

I'm scared. My therapy appointment is Tuesday and I'm hoping it will turn out well but I'm scared. I'm going to have to tell my story all over again. I'm going to have to dredge up a bunch of stuff I'd rather not think about all in the hopes that somehow I can heal myself. I'm always afraid when I go to a new therapist that they're not going to believe me, that they're going to think I'm lying about having been sexually abused and raped. It's a groundless fear. I have yet to have a single therapist do that, except for one psychiatrist who asked me if what my dad did to me was "just statutory rape", as if that makes it any better that he raped his 11-year-old daughter. It's just paranoia on my part, I guess.

For so many years, abuse victims were not believed, and I came up in the years when they were finally starting to believe that people could and did hurt children like that. I remember the invalidation of "nobody's father would do that" kinds of things.

But I remember the pain. Sometimes I remember it so vividly it's like I'm back there again.

How do I reclaim myself from this? How do I pick up the pieces of Nora and turn them into a whole woman?

I read the bio for the therapist I'm going to see. Her name is Patricia and she sounds really awesome and part of me is really hopeful that she'll be able to guide me to wholeness. But part of me is a scared kid, never mind that I'm well past childhood now.

Sometimes the world is a big scary place.

And somehow I'm supposed to work through this emotional turmoil and go take care of my household, go buy groceries and cook supper and do all that stuff while I feel so crappy.

I need something to make me smile. I wish the cats would do something funny or something to make me laugh.

Part of me says, "Just push the emotions down and fucking well do what you need to be doing!" and part of me says, "Just how the fuck am I supposed to do that?"

I just want to chain-smoke and cry but I can't do that. I have to find a way to cope.

I tried to watch "Clue" (very goofy movie based on the board game of all things) last night but I fell asleep about 30 minutes into the movie. I was trying to cheer myself up.

I really am trying. It's just such a struggle sometimes to get up and get dressed and comb my hair and brush my teeth and function. Days like today, I'd really rather just lie in bed and stare into space. But that's not healthy either. I feel like it's an invisible struggle, like nobody understands how hard it is to make myself do the mundane things I have to do.

I just feel scared and hurt and alone.